Norman Triplett

In 1898, he conducted what Gordon Allport called the first experiment in social psychology, though this claim has been challenged in recent years.

[5] In his experiment, Triplett arranged for 40 children to play a game that involved turning a small fishing reel as quickly as possible.

He concluded that moving from isolation to a group context can reduce our sense of uniqueness, but at the same time it can enhance our ability to perform simple tasks rapidly.

Although the phenomenon of social facilitation is now well established, Triplett's original experiment did not produce strong results, at least by modern standards in psychology.

The fact that half of his participants showed no evidence of social facilitation would suggest that one should avoid overstating these findings.